Asset Management - Database, Packages, and Local Files

BeardLib can load Assets for your level in different ways. Currently the standard is to load assets from database. BeardLib handles this process automatically when spawning a unit and there is next to no other step required.

The old method was Package loading. When spawning a Unit, you had to load a package containing said Unit. The downside is that a package also contains lots of other units, taking up memory. In some cases like sound effects or voice lines you may still need to load some, just remember to pick the smallest available packages.

The third method is Local Files, or extract loading. This means the Unit’s files are actually present inside your Map’s assets folder. It was used in combination with Package loading to reduce the memory usage of a heist. The downside is that since the files had to be extracted, the space the Map folder takes on your harddrive went up the more Units you load this way, resulting in longer download times. These days Local files are only really used for custom assets.

Some Units are dependent on other assets like Effects and those sometimes don’t get loaded properly. In this case you need to manually load them. You do that in the Main-Tab in the World menu. You can see the dependencies of a unit by extracting its .unit file using Diesel Bundle Viewer, opening the file in a text editor and checking for a <dependencies> tag. Those assets need to be loaded for the unit to work, otherwise the game might crash.

You can manage your loaded assets and packages from the Asset Manager, also in the Main-Tab. There you can see a list of every package and a list of every Asset currently loaded in your level. Assets that are loaded but not used are marked in Yellow. Assets marked in Red are assets present in your level that are not loaded. Both can easily be fixed with the buttons on the right. Some assets may always appear red or yellow, despite saying they are loaded, but unless you’re crashing it should not be a problem.